Monday, December 17, 2012

The Invisible Bridge - Wendy's Review

One and a half million Jewish men
and women and children. How was anyone to understand a number like that?
Andras knew it took three thousand to fill the seats of the Dohany
Street Synagogue. To accommodate a million and a half, one would have
had to replicate that building , its arches and domes, its Moorish
interior, its balcony, its dark wooden pews and gilded ark, five hundred
times. And then to envision each man and woman and child inside as a
unique and irreplaceable human being, the way he imagined Mendel
Horovitz or the Ivory Tower or his brother Matyas, each of them with
desires and fears, a mother and a father, a birthplace, a bed, a first
love, a web of memories, a cache of secrets, a skin, a heart, an
infinitely complicated brain – to imagine them that way, and then to
imagine them dead, extinguished for all time – how could anyone begin to
grasp it? – from The Invisible Bridge, page 536 -

Andras Levi, a Hungarian Jew, finds himself full of hope and
excitement on a train to Paris in 1937. He has won a scholarship to a
school of architecture, an unbelievable opportunity for a Jewish man
living in the shadow of war. In Paris, he nurses his art and ambition,
finds camaraderie with men who will change his life, and discovers love
with a beautiful ballet teacher. He misses his brothers – Tibor, a
medical student who finds opportunity in Italy, and Matyas, a boy who is
on the brink of becoming a man and whose carefree spirit finds joy in
theater. But as Europe becomes embroiled in war, all three young men
will find themselves back in Hungary and struggling to survive the labor
service and the steady erosion of human rights as Hitler’s influence
and power come ever closer.

Julie Orringer’s novel The Invisible Bridge is a searing,
sweeping, and ultimately triumphant story about love, war, survival and
the endurance of the human spirit. Andras, his brothers, their wives,
their children, their parents, and the friends they discover are all
wonderfully developed by the talented Orringer. Paris with its noisy
bars and beautiful architecture and radiant theaters and opera houses
comes alive as Orringer’s characters establish their lives and nurse
their dreams of a future.

The Invisible Bridge is a heartbreaking novel – how could it
be anything less? One does not have to be a student of history to know
the story of the Jewish people during WWII. But in this sprawling novel,
Orringer puts a human face on the tragedy and gives her readers a
glimpse of an often ignored part of the story – that of the Hungarian
Jews whose government allied with the Germans early on and used its
people as slave labor in the war machine. The sense of inevitability is
strong as Orringer builds her story. I found myself breathless,
emotional, wanting to stop the march forward as Andras and his brothers
and the people they love are thrust into a world beyond their control.

He wanted to believe
that someone could be watching in pity and horror, someone who could
change things if he chose. He wanted to believe that men were not in
charge. But in the center of his sternum he felt a cold certainty that
told him otherwise. He believed in God, yes, the God of his fathers, the
one to whom he’d prayed in Koyar and Debrecen and Paris and in the work
service, but that God, the One, was not One who intervened in the way
they needed someone to intervene just then. He had designed the cosmos
and thrown its doors open to man, and man had moved in and begun a life
there. But God could no more step inside and rearrange that life than an
architect could rearrange the lives of a building’s inhabitants.- from The Invisible Bridge, page 432 -

As with all memorable works, The Invisible Bridge succeeds
through its careful attention to detail, the development of its
characters and the strength of its prose. Orringer has a finely honed
sense of who her characters are – their fears, their vulnerabilities,
their strengths, their dreams. She takes them to the edge, and then
allows them to find their way back – battered, wiser, but never
diminished.

There are big themes in this novel – the importance of art, the
strength of familial bonds, the idea that we are but a speck in the
universe being born along on a tide of which we have little control.

Of course. Why would a
man not argue his own shameful culpability, why would he not crave
responsibility for disaster, when the alternative was to find himself to
be nothing more than a speck of human dust?- from The Invisible Bridge, page 489 -

It would be easy for an author to allow these themes to sink her
novel into despair. But it is a testament to Orringer’s talent that she
never vacates hope and a promise for something better for her
characters.

It is no surprise that I loved this novel. I loved its scope, its
humanity, and its honesty. I loved Orringer’s prose, and her ability to
resurrect the feel of a generation marching towards war. I loved the
characters – Andras with his generous heart, Tibor with his sensitivity
and Matyas with his free spirit. I loved that Orringer did not abandon
me in darkness, but lifted me into the light. This is a book that adds
to our understanding of history and provides insight into the human side
of war. It is remarkable. And you should read it.

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What is this all about?

This blog was created as the official site of the Orange Prize Project - a reading challenge which challenges participants to read all the winners and nominated authors honored by the Women's Prize for Fiction (previously the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction) and the Orange Broadband Award for New Writers.

Wendy @ caribousmom.com is the owner of this blog.

The challenge has been discontinued as of January 1, 2014, but I welcome readers to browse the many reviews on this site.